Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Sioux Falls

We're in South Dakota. The drive here from Rochester was 230 miles of farm land and wind turbines generating electricity. We got off to a late start (reason is below) and stopped for lunch at an Applebee's about 20 miles from Rochester. We waited and waited for our food, and Penny politely asked about the delay. The waitress told us that they were a server short today because the family of the additional server who was supposed to be there was the family that was wiped out in that car wreck I mentioned earlier. Wow. Talk about small town America. When the waitress gave me the check I saw it was for just $10. I said it couldn't be correct, but she said the manager discounted it by 50% because of the delay. We're a long way from NJ and PA.

More problems with the trailer this morning. The landing gear legs wouldn't extend again. We found a nearby RV technician with a mobile repair shop and he came to the rescue...sort of. He got the gear to work, but not exactly the way it should. He said we needed to replace the gear box that transmits energy from the electric motor to the legs, but he had never seen our brand of landing gear, and didn't have the part. So we decided to push on. When we arrived at the campground in Sioux Falls, we found it was next door to a big RV dealer, so we went there to see if the could fix it. They never heard of that brand either. So we'll continue on. Hopefully, we'll be able to get it fixed before it quits entirely.

Sioux Falls actually has a waterfall, so we'll take in the local sites tomorrow.